


What it Means to be a Son

by themoistplinth



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Other, and how it feels to have your child stolen and false one given back, because fuck you todd, i mean how would you deal?, nora was his sister not his wife, oh my sole survivor is called leo and he's gay, this is mostly an exploration of how the sole survivor deals with synth shaun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 15:02:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19405729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themoistplinth/pseuds/themoistplinth
Summary: Shaun only wants a father.Leo only wants his son.These two things can conflict.





	What it Means to be a Son

**What it Means to be a Son**

One of the many, many things Shaun had learned whilst living amongst the minutemen at The Castle was that nothing was easy. He saw it in every raider attack, in every radiation storm, in every person who just left in the middle of the night without a word and in every food shortage where someone would go without.

Father told him that life on the surface was a struggle every day and father had shown him that it was true. Everything from having shelter in the rain to feeling warm at night was a challenge, even if he did have plenty of adults to help him. Auntie Piper was his favourite for that-she had such a gentle and patient way of explaining things. It sucked she spent so much time away in Diamond City, but she says she has someone there that needs her more than him. She also says that when he’s bigger she’ll take him along to see it one day.

The hardest thing for Shaun was talking to his father though-he could never measure what the response would be. Once Shaun had asked his dad for a box of Fancy Lad Snack Cakes and he took him on a trip to a ruin called ‘Concord’ just to search for some. Another time he’d asked for just a small vacuum tube and his dad froze and just walked away.

Shaun thought about that a lot.

***   
  
“You know the kid’s just curious,” Nick said, sitting behind his desk and taking a long drag of a cigarette, “He’s got access to a whole new world up here, you can’t blame him for wanting to have some of it.”

“That’s not it,” Leo said, “It’s just that...if Shaun was from my time, or if I’d raised him here, I don’t know if he would want that. I mean what the hell kind of kid asks for old world tech?”   
  


“Doesn’t seem weird to me,” Ellie remarked. She’d been standing nearby pretending to write in a file, clearly listening in to their conversation. “Plenty kids just want to learn how stuff works. I mean machines are amazing, he probably just wants to figure it out how they tick.”

“Why Ellie I’m flattered,” Nick remarked, a smile fighting to claim his lips.

“All I’m saying is kids just want to learn, I mean come on. When I was a little girl I ran off on my own outside the walls to raid a bookshop for pens to teach myself how to write.”

“That’s exactly it,” Leo sighed, “You were raised in Diamond City, this is normal for you. But Shaun was raised…”

“In The Institute,” Nick finished. 

Leo nodded. “How do I know this isn’t just him wanting to copy the creeps down there and build some weird machine.”

Nick and Ellie exchanged a look. A moment passed and Nick stood up from his desk and walked to a filing cabinet, old and wooden, a monument to the longevity of handmade furniture over that of a machine. He began ruffling through files until he found the one he was looking for, turning and handing it to Leo.

“The Nakano Case?” Leo said, confusion hanging in his voice, “Nick I remember the Nakano Case, it was only a few months ago.”

“Then you remember Kasumi,” the synth retorted, “She was into machines and managed to convince herself she was a synth. Turns out she just liked machines, but her paranoia and imagination made her as delusional as a raider hopped up on psycho.”

“Your point?”

“His point,” Ellie said, “Is that you’re doing the same thing. You think just because Shaun likes machines he’s going to pull a Broken Mask on you?”

Leo sat in silence, thoughts moving faster than a hungry deathclaw. His hands found the wedding ring on his fingers and he turned it around anxiously. “No,” he finally admitted, “I think he’s safe to be around. It’s just...he’s not Shaun.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed and Ellie placed a hand on the old detective’s shoulder. 

“What you’ve got, kid, is a second chance at raising your son after the wasteland took him from you,” Nick said coldly, “He may not be your original but he’s more than most parents of the commonwealth get. A lot of people would kill to get what you have. Hell if I recall right, you did.”

Leo looked down ashamed.

“Just spend more time with him,” Ellie gently suggested, “Maybe take him on a trip. Somewhere easy that the Minutemen need help with.”

  
  


***   
  


The road to Taffington Boathouse was fractured and bumpy, though it was a nicer path than taking the direct route through the wilds of the Commonwealth. On a road, Shaun thought, he could see where his next footstep would be. Dad was next to him, holding his laser rifle close to his chest. Shaun had asked Dad if he could have a pistol to hold onto on the road but he’d told him no. Apparently having a gun makes you a target. 

“It’s really warm today Dad,” Shaun said, breaking the silence between the two of them had held since leaving Sanctuary. “Auntie Curie said that the great war should’ve made a nuclear winter happen but pre-war pollution kept the snow way down south in Florida.”

Dad nodded and kept walking, keeping his eyes on the horizon ahead. Undeterred Shaun kept talking.

“Commonwealth weather is weird, I think,” he remarked, “Like the green rain that everyone hides from. It’s radioactive, from the glowing sea right? What’s it like down there?”

Shaun waited for an answer but Dad remained quiet. He’d almost given up by the time the older man spoke. 

“It’s scary,” Dad admitted, “It’s like the radiation storms but it’s everywhere. Deathclaws roam the surface and radscorpions wait underground to burst up and attack you. I’ve only been there a few times.”

“Why’d you go there Dad?” Shaun asked. He’d never heard his Dad talk so freely about something this far away-he’d barely been able to get a word out of him about Nuka World.

“The first time I was looking for a man named Virgil. Then I went back to him twice, once to get some blueprints and once to cure a disease he had.”

“Have you been since then?”

“Only to visit the Children of Atom. Wanted to see if they were like the ones over in Far Harbour.”

“Who are the Children of Atom Dad?”

Dad laughed. “Crazy people. They believe that the radiation is a god and that medicine like Rad-Away is blasphemy.”

“They sound stupid,” Shaun said decisively, wanting to carry on the conversation, “Why would anyone not use Rad-Away.”

“You’d be surprised,” Dad said, grinning now, “Couple times I’ve found people who’ve exposed themselves to radiation to become ghouls so that they’ll be immortal. Course Ghouls and Super Mutants don’t need Rad-Away, so they wouldn’t.”

“They’re not people though,” Shaun said, “They don’t count.”

“Yes they are,” Dad snapped, “Ghouls or Super Mutants can be just as much like people as we are. Just because they look different, if they want to be people they are people.”

“Like synths?” Shaun asked, “The things in the Institute that wanted to escape?”

Dad didn’t talk again after that. He kept his eyes ahead, as if he was looking for something that was never there. Every time Shaun tried to talk he’d be shushed, just in case something was ahead waiting. Shaun almost wished some raiders would attack, just so he’d have something to do other than walk in silence. It felt unbearable.

***

_ “Please Dad, don’t leave me here! I wanna go with you!” it said, the machine. It had Shaun’s eyes and his nose and what his voice must have sounded like. It called him Dad. It wasn’t Shaun. _

_ Leo stared at the Synth. He didn’t understand the Commonwealth’s hate for The Institute, not truly until now.  _

_ “Why did you call me Dad?” Leo asked, hiding the need to beg for answers from his voice. _

_ “What?” the machine said, “You’re my father! Why else would I call you that?” _

_ Piper talked a lot about this, The Institute coming in the night, taking people you loved and replacing them with machines. Before Leo was disgusted by the idea, twofold, kidnapping people and brainwashing others to be them. But this was something else. _

_ “Who told you that?” Leo said, demanding almost, “Who told you I was your father?” _

_ “No one told me, I just know!” it claimed, “Don’t leave me here!” _

_ The Institute killed Leo’s sister. The Institute stole Leo’s son. The Institute brainwashed his son and stole his life. The Institute turned what should have been a happy life together and made Shaun a reclusive tyrant turning a wasteland to war. And now The Institute tried to sell him back what they had stolen in the most twisted way possible. _

_ “Uh, boss?” Sturges said, “You’re not just going to leave the kid here are you?” _

_ “Of course not,” Leo said, “I’m your-yeah, I’m your Dad.” _

_ The lie hurt almost as much as the knowledge Leo’s real son laid in a bed just minutes away, an old man waiting to die by his own father’s hand.  _

_ “Let’s get out of here.” _

***

Taffington Boathouse was boring. It was a safehouse for Synths, which meant everyone was always nervous. At least back at The Castle there was sometimes mirelurk attacks for people to be afraid of. They were a cool kind of nervous, they had big old timey looking laser guns and would let Shaun watch while they upgraded them. Here everyone was a boring kind of nervous. They were just scared for the sake of being scared.

Except Deacon. He was cool. Today he looked like a member of the Brotherhood which was a new look.    
  


“Pretty cool huh?” he asked Shaun, doing a twirl. “I found it after one of that lot crashed a vertibird. Pretty slick huh?”

“You did one of the straps wrong,” Shaun replied pointedly. He enjoyed spending time with Deacon, he was one of the few adults that treated him like he wasn’t a kid.

“I see you’re paying attention.” Deacon winked at Shaun and fixed a strap into place and held his hands out for approval. 

“Wrong strap,” Shaun snorted, “But nice try.”

Deacon slumped down on a wall. The Boathouse was where most of the important business went down, so the two of them were waiting inside the main homestead. Sleeping bags dotted the flaw with empty cans of Pork n’ Beans. It was Deacon’s turn to cleanup so naturally the place would remain a mess.

“I’ll get it eventually,” Deacon said, “But they have so many uniforms and rules and strict ranking. How do they get anything done?”

“Why do you even need to dress like one?” Shaun asked, “Aren’t they neutral to The Railroad?”

“As far as your dad can tell,” Deacon sighed, “But they don’t seem to like advanced tech, so folks like our friends here are under constant threat by them anyway. They’re the same with ghouls.”

“Are there any ghouls in The Railroad though?”

“Just me.”

Shaun snorted again, “You’re not a ghoul, you’re a liar.”

Deacon shrugged, “I can be both.”

A moment of silence passed, not of a lack of things to say but a lack of need to say a thing. Eventually Shaun broke it.

“Do you have anything that can play Holotapes?” Shaun said tentatively. Deacon cocked an eyebrow. 

“I might. What you found a copy of Zeta Invaders?”

Shaun bit his lip, debating how much of the truth would be the right amount. Deacon had taught him that dishonesty and lying were two different things, both okay depending on the situation.    
  


“It’s something for Dad,” he said casually, “I wanna make sure it’s been recorded right. It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t recorded right, so I just need to listen back to it. It’s private though. Not for anyone except Dad to hear.”

“Yeah,” Deacon said, deadpan and unconvinced. He shook his head. “Look Shaun, I gotta tell you I’m probably the worst person you could be trying to keep things from. I’m a professional liar. I once sold a guy his own Brahmin for twice the price it was worth.” Deacon pulled a small device out of his pocket and chucked it to the boy. “But you’re normally pretty straight with me so I’ll respect it. Use this. I’ll go stall your dad, make sure that he’s doing okay. Can promise five mins, max, got it?”

Deacon stood up and made his way out the house. As soon as Shaun was sure that he wasn’t waiting outside to spy Shaun fished out the plastic tape he’d been carrying ever since The Institute went up in smoke.

Shaun had seen Father, lying in bed, and spoken to him for the last time. Father had given him the tape and told him to give it to his Dad, and to not worry about how he’d be getting out The Institute. Shaun worried anyway, and he never gave the tape to his dad.

Now was as good of a time as ever. But he couldn’t just give it away without listening to it first. He opened the box that Deacon had given him and loaded the tape inside.

***

After Leo left the meeting, he found Shaun fiddling with a hotplate on the stairs outside the main house. He had a pang of panic but remembered what Ellie said and tried to push the panic down. 

“Hey kiddo,” he said with a forced smile, “You okay?” 

Shaun nodded. “Deacon let me play with a cool machine and I found this.” He raised the hot plate. “We going?” 

“Not too far,” Leo replied, “I’m gonna walk you over to Covenant to stay with Curie for a bit. I gotta go to Nuka World, there’s been reports of a Courser in the area and there’s too many synths living there for that to be good.”

“Why can’t I come with you?” Shaun whined, “Nuka World sounds so cool!” 

Leo shook his head. “When you’re old enough that decaying heads on pikes isn’t permanently scarring for you, or when we finally manage to get them down, I’ll take you. You can even ride the rollercoaster. Until then-”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll stay safe in The Commonwealth.” 

As the two of them got ready to leave Shaun walked over to Deacon to hand him back a small machine and the two exchanged some quick words. Shaun rushed back over. 

“Deacon says I can stay here!” he grinned, “Can I Dad? I promise I’ll be good!” 

Leo pretended to think for a moment but ultimately already knew his answer. “Of course you can,” he said. Out of all the people in the wasteland the one he trusted most with Shaun was Deacon. No one could look after a synth better than him. 

“By the way,” Shaun said, “This is for you. I’ve been holding onto it for a bit but I don’t think I should anymore.” The boy pressed something warm and plastic feeling into his hand and squeezed it. “Don’t listen to it yet. Wait until you’re for away then do.”

“Okay Shaun,” Leo promised, “I won’t.” He began to walk away but was stopped.

“And Dad?”

Leo turned back to face the synth that was his son, that was not his son, and found him looking at him with more emotion than he’d ever seen on his face. 

“Thank you for looking after me,” he said. “I know It’s not easy sometimes but...thank you.”

“You’re my son,” Leo lied, “Of course.”

“Dad,” Shaun’s voice said, serious, “Thank you.”

***

As soon as he was out of reach of Taffington Boathouse Leo properly inspected the holotape. It was freshly made, that much was clear, which told him it was either Brotherhood or Institute and considering he’d done his best to keep Shaun away from the military it must be the former. Only those two had the means in the wasteland to engineer new tech like this and have it look so new. 

Which meant that Shaun had got it from a heartless scientist slaver or he had got it from Leo’s son. 

Leo loaded it into his Pip-Boy and stopped the tape almost immediately. If these were the last words he would ever hear from his son he couldn’t be doing it in the middle of the wasteland. He had to be in the right place. 

***

_ “If you are hearing this, then whatever conflicts you and I have endured are over,” Father said. His voice was raspy and sore. Shaun could only think how close to the end of Father’s life this must of been for his voice to be so stiff. Probably minutes before Father had given Shaun the tape to begin with. How kind of a man to spend his last moments talking to his sworn enemy. _

_ “I have no reason to believe you’ll honour this request I’m about to make but I feel compelled to try anyway.” _

***

Leo sat in the worst place in the world. Worse than The Glowing Sea where Deathclaws roamed and tried to eviscerate anything they found. Worse than the fog of Far Harbour where untold monsters lurked, ready to make their food of any traveller. Worse than the park of Nuka World where families became slaves under foot of a tyrant man.

Leo sat in the icy depths of Vault 111 where the floor was as damp as it was unforgiving. In front of him was the cryopod of his sister, the woman who had fled into the vault with his son in her arms and had died trying to protect him. Leo had thought plenty of what would have happened if he had just let her finish in the bathroom first that day the bombs dropped. Would she have had to watch him die in the vault? Would she have trekked across the wasteland searching for Shaun the same way Leo did? Or would she have grieved her brother and let the past go?

Would she have approved of what Leo had done to save The Commonwealth?

“Hey sis,” Leo said, “Long time huh? Last I saw you...I think I’d just let Shaun...anyway. I have a tape that he left me. I thought we could listen together?”

Before the war he’d never understood why people visited graves and spoke to the people they’d lost, not even when he’d lost his husband, but now he got it. His sister was gone but if he believed it then she wasn’t. 

Leo loaded the tape into his pipboy. Shaun’s voice, the real shaun rasped at him. Making a request. Of course. All he’d done since Leo had found him in The Institute was asking him to do things. How different would things have gone if Leo had gone on the mission like Shaun asked and recaptured that synth at Libertalia?

Shaun kept talking.

***

_ “This synth, this...boy. He deserves more.” _

_ Shaun’s thoughts of what Father was talking about were gone in a heartbeat. _

_ “He has been reprogrammed to believe he is your son. It is my hope you will take him with you.” _

_ Shaun’s hands dropped the playback device, pausing the tape and spilling it out onto the floor. Reprogrammed to believe is he your son. That’s what it said. Reprogrammed.  _

_ Shaun’s hands shook. He looked at them. Flesh. Skin. Person. Real. He was real. He was made of flesh and skin, he was a person, he was real. He wasn’t a synth.  _

_ Shaun thought about the day The Institute was destroyed. Dad didn’t know who he was. Of course he didn’t. Shaun wasn’t his son. Shaun was a machine. Shaun wasn’t that man’s son. That man’s son was probably stolen by The Institute and replaced by him, like so many other people’s sons and daughters and fathers and mothers and friends and neighbours and anything else before him.  _

_ Silent tears racked claimed Shaun’s face. He wasn’t Leo’s son. Despite everything that he thought he knew about himself he did not truly know this.  _

***

“It is my hope that you take him with you. I would ask only that you give him a chance. A chance to be a part of whatever future awaits the Commonwealth.”

The tape clicked silent. Leo sat in silence with his dead sister. It was the kind of silence that is stronger than steel or any Supermutant. The kind of silence it takes more strength to break than a skyscraper. But, like all things, the silence had to be broken. 

“He...he changed his mind,” Leo whispered, summoning every ounce of power he had just to get the words out. “In his last moments...Shaun changed his mind.”

Leo got no reply. 

“Shaun saw synths as machines. Not real people. But in his last moments he decided that the boy was a real person.”

Leo’s grief overwhelmed him. It was not the grief he had losing his husband, the slow grief he had while he watched the love of his life have the energy sucked out of him by an unstoppable cancer, nor was it the vengeful and angry grief he felt when he found his sister dead by a psychopathic monster and it was most certainly not the quiet grief he felt for the world that the bombs destroyed that he would never see again.

He felt a grief no parent should ever feel of losing a child and not being able to properly say goodbye. The grief of his son being an old man before him, and being a man that he would never be able to truly know. A man so complex and so understated that Leo hadn’t given him the chance to change. He’d destroyed Shaun’s life and legacy so completely and he hadn’t given it a second thought.

And despite it Shaun had given him another chance at being a Dad.

***

_ I am not my father’s son. I am a machine that pretends to be his son. I am a liar and a fraud and I represent everything my father lost. Heartless men took my father’s son from him, did something unspeakable to him and I am the only reminder. Everytime my father looks at me he remembers what The Institute took. _

_ And even though this is true my father did not turn his back on me. My father saw a frightened boy he looked like his own and decided to try to show him the love he never had the chance to give his own son. My father is a man so full of love he would rather live in pain every day than allow a machine feel pain for something it is not responsible for. _

_ He is a better man than he will ever realise.He has taken countless lives protecting the innocent and when confronted with a world that was no longer his own he decided to make it a better place in remembrance of all that he lost.  _

_ I am not my father’s son. But I am proud, nonetheless, that he is still my father.  _

***

It was sundown. Deacon stood guard outside Taffington Boathouse, knowing that this time of day is the time most likely for raiders or mutants or any other wasteland horror would come knocking. 

Guns fired in the distance and Deacon steeled himself but he knew as soon as he heard the guns stop and raiders run in the opposite direction to him that it was okay. It was just Leo.

Deacon lied. Of course he did, it’s what Deacon does. He didn’t listen in on Shaun’s holotape, he set his playback device to copy it. He heard the entire tape up until it paused itself. He knew what the kid was going through. 

“Hey Shaun look at this,” he called inside the house where the boy had a screwdriver and laser rifle in hand, trying to change its capacity. He walked outside and saw, backlit by the sun kissed sky, Leo slowly walking in his direction. Shaun looked frightened and Leo looked...Deacon didn’t know. He’d spent his life reading people, lying to them, being anything except one of them, that now this look on Leo’s face looked completely alien to him. 

Leo finished making his way to the house and gave Deacon a look. He didn’t need to be told twice. With the sole survivor of Vault 111 here, they didn’t need a guard. Deacon moved inside but given the ruined house, it was hard not to hear what outside.

“Shaun,” he heard Leo say, “I’m so sorry.”

“Dad?”

Clothes ruffled as it sounded as if Leo pulled Shaun into a hug. The man sounded as if he was crying.    
  


“I’m sorry Shaun,” Leo said, “I’m sorry I haven’t been here enough. I’m sorry I’ve pushed you away.”

“Dad…”

“You’re my son Shaun,” Leo declared, “You are my son, no matter where you came from or who made you. And I will always be your father.”

“Dad.”

A moment passed and Deacon imagined the two men, one over 200 hundred years old and one made practically yesterday look at each other truly for the first time. 

“I love you Shaun.”

“I love you too Dad.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey yo writing this made me cry. Didn't expect that the game with the kid in the fridge and KLEO could do that.


End file.
